Indian rulers have traditionally been a corrupt lot

For the Love of Money, Hand in Graft
India should take lessons from some of its neighbours to put an end to corruption
Indians have always been hopelessly divided amongst themselves. Small states, enclaves, principalities and kingdoms dotted the landscape in the past. So much so that at the time of Independence, there existed more than 500 [...]

Widespread corruption in the Public Food Distribution System causing starvation deaths in India

May 31, 2007
A Written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre
The Prime Minister of India in his foreword in the ‘Report to The People’ dated May 22, 2007, claims: “In this 60th year of independence, the country should have the satisfaction of recording for the fifth year in a succession a rate of economic [...]

Indian’s migration history is 2500 years old

NRI saga goes back over 2,500 years
For most of the new NRI generation, the Indian migration started about 60 years or 100 years at the most. But this saga goes back over 2,500 years ago much before Biblical times to distant shores of Africa, South-East Asia and the Far East. Considering that they travelled by [...]

186 million Indians don’t have voter ID cards!

A decade-and-a-half after the electoral photo identity card (EPIC) scheme began, and despite Rs 1,500 crore having been spent so far on the project, more than 186 million Indians — or more than a quarter of all eligible voters — still do not have these cards. It is a failure that could lie at the [...]

Human Trafficking to US: India’s Hindu party legislator recieved 20,000 US $ per person

I got Rs 800,000 per person, Katara says
Sahil Makkar, Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, April 28, 2007
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Babubhai Katara, arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle people abroad, has told the police that he was paid Rs 800,000 for every person he helped to go abroad illegally, with his aide and travel [...]

Defence spending causes poverty in India

NEW DELHI, April 2 (Reuters) - South Asian nations need to cut defence spending and increase funding for women and children’s welfare, healthcare and education to curb poverty in one of the world’s poorest regions, activists said on Monday.
The call by a coalition of about 200 voluntary groups — representing women, tribal people, trade unions [...]

Indians are worlds most undemocratic people: Book

New Delhi, March. 4 (PTI): Indians are perhaps the world’s most undemocratic people, living in the world’s largest and most plural democracy where a person’s self-worth is almost exclusively determined by the rank he occupies, says a new book. A profoundly hierarchical society, in India the determination of relative rank (Is this person superior [...]

749 killed in 2006 in the Maoists’ conflict in India

Salwa Judum campaign prolongs the conflict
South Asia Foreign Correspondent Club, New Delhi:
According to the Naxal Conflict in 2006 released to the media today by Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), 749 persons were killed in the Naxalite conflict in India in 2006. These include 285 civilians, 135 security personnel and 329 alleged Naxalites. The highest [...]

Nearly 70,000 killed in 17-year Kashmir insurgency: rights group

SRINAGAR, India: Nearly 70,000 people have died in the 17-year conflict in India’s portion of Kashmir, a local human rights group said Friday, a figure markedly higher than the latest police count.
The Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society came up with the death toll after reviewing news reports and conducting door-to-door surveys in every district in [...]

10 % of the rural housholds are landless in India: Survey

Despite the emphasis on land reforms, the survey found that about 10% of rural households were landless — owning either no land or less than 0.002 hectare. The corresponding urban figure is 49%. This would indicate that high rates of migration are creating an increasing number of people who do not own their dwellings. The [...]